Ukraine - Teenager’s death spurs vaccination questions , fears

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From: Jackie Fletcher <jackie.fletcher@...>

<http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/30691>http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/30691

Teenager’s death spurs vaccination questions, fears

29 October 2008, 22:00 | Dariya Orlova, Kyiv Post Staff Writer

Violations in vaccine testing procedures has many

pointing the blame at Ukraine’s Health Ministry

The death of a teenager from vaccination last

spring is scaring Ukrainians and making them

refuse immunizations. The trend is expected to

increase as investigators keep uncovering

violations in vaccine testing procedures,

selecting people who need immunization and other

bad practices. “The Health Ministry made fatal

mistakes and violated laws,” said Victor Korzh,

head of the parliamentary commission investigating the case.

Anton Tyshchenko, a 17-year old from Kramatorsk,

died from a measles vaccine in May this year. The

serum was developed in India and apparently

wasn’t tested in Ukraine, according to the

findings of two investigation commissions. They

also found the boy did not actually need a

vaccination at all because he had already been immunized twice.

Tyshchenko was vaccinated in school on May 12. A

few hours later, he started feeling sick and

developed a fever. He was hospitalized the same

night, but died eight hours after the vaccine was

injected. “There is a direct cause-effect

relation between Anton Tyshchenko’s death and his

vaccination for measles and rubella,” Prosecutor

General Oleksandr Medvedko said in his interview with Fakty daily last month.

Tyshchenko was vaccinated with one of the nine

million doses of Indian serum provided by UNICEF

as humanitarian aid to Ukraine – part of a joint

immunization campaign with the Health Ministry.

The campaign has been put on hold until the investigation of this case is over.

Investigators said that they suspected at least

six violations in the process of immunization.

Medvedko said one of them was immunizing in the

spring, when children’s health is weak after the

winter. Immediately after the immunization,

Tyshchenko was sent to hike over five kilometers

to the nearest clinic for a compulsory lung X-ray.

A parliamentary commission that conducted a

parallel investigation said the serum used for

Tyshchenko was not even registered or tested in

Ukraine. However, 207 cases of complications have

already been found, according to their reports.

“There were numerous outrages during the

additional vaccination campaign,” said Korzh. The

vaccine itself was banned from use in India, its

country of origin, and was not used in any

country within the European Union, Korzh said.

WHO and UNICEF, however, insisted there was

nothing wrong with the vaccine. “The measles and

rubella vaccine used in Ukraine is pre-qualified

by WHO and produced in accordance with the

highest international standards by the Serum

Institute of India, the largest producer of

measles and rubella vaccine globally,” wrote

anna Zaichykova, a communications assistant

at UNICEF Ukraine, in response to questions from

the Kyiv Post. Zaichykova said that the septic

shock that caused the teenager’s death was “unrelated to immunization.”

The Rada investigative committee also discovered

that the scale of immunization suggested by the

Health Ministry is largely overstated. The

Ministry expected to apply vaccine to nine

million people aged 16-29, but experts said only

20 percent of these people need the jab. “For

those people who have immunity, such immunization

is not only harmful and dangerous for their

health, but can also cause drastic consequences,”

Korzh said. Tyshchenko was one of them because he

had already received measles vaccine twice in previous years.

As more gruesome details about mass vaccination

come out into public light, more Ukrainians are

turning away from vaccinations. Some data

suggests that the number of parents who refuse to

vaccinate their children has grown two or

three-fold this year, and even more in Kyiv.

Vyacheslav Kostylev, head of the League of Civil

Rights Protection, a non-government organization,

said the number of people who ask for legal help

on how to refuse vaccinating their children is

growing. Ukraine’s law is contradictory: on the

one hand, parents are required to present

vaccination certificates for their children when

they start school or kindergarten. On the other

hand, the right to education is guaranteed by the

Constitution and vaccination is the parents’ free choice.

Kostylev, whose kids have not been vaccinated,

avoided the conflict by sending them to a private

kindergarten where the vaccination rules are not

so strict. He said other parents prefer simply to

pay for a fake certificate to avoid headaches.

“They mostly buy certificates, because it is very

hard to fight [with legal mechanisms],” he said.

The Health Ministry keeps insisting the nation

needs mass immunization. “Refusal to vaccinate is

a threat to many people’s lives,” said Mykola

Prodanchuk, deputy health minister, who signed

documents allowing the Indian vaccine into

Ukraine. He said the number of people who require

immunization is currently high enough to cause an outbreak of measles.

WHO is also pushing to resume a mass immunization

campaign in Ukraine. “The global health partners

urge the government to reaffirm its commitment to

the WHO strategy to eliminate measles and rubella

in Europe by 2010,” its statement said.

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Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

Vaccines - http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm

Vaccine Dangers & Homeopathy Online/email courses - next classes Sept 10, 2008